“Trying to keep the trap of trespassers away from the headcap”

It’s a rare occurrence when hip-hop collides with neuroscience, but that is exactly what Mavi does. In preparation for the release of his second LP “Shango”, the neuroscience student is back with an EP filled with conscious rap, lo-fi and moody beats, and brilliant poems and rhyme schemes. Perhaps Mavi’s music is best summed up in this line from his 2019 track, “Sense”,

“She said, ‘What kind of songs you make?’

I make the kind you gotta ready, baby”

And that is exactly what Mavi does. On the single “SMH” Mavi draws comparisons and parallels of man’s destruction of Earth to the destruction of man’s consciousness.

“Stuck in Anthropocene where moot is the standards

And movement ungranted.

Unless you snooping for a human zoo to loot and transplant in.

Attune your cruiser to the tune of mass panic.”

A personally introspective and intellectual MC, Mavi’s music will get missed when played next to some of his contemporaries. But as time has shown, there is always room for music that doesn’t play on other external/extroverted themes. As young as he is Mavi displays the thoughts of an old soul with lines like; “another hundred thousand miles another step”, and “what kind of question is ‘didn’t you quit?’, pass the lighter. I gotta do a lotta squinting at my past to like it”. It makes one wonder where Mavi’s mind and spirit have traveled to. Even African-American history get’s a line on the album, “My forty acres metaphorical I’m whipped like a mule”. And maybe that’s it. Maybe Mavi connects so deeply with his spirit and ancestry that it is expressed through his music.

A short EP clocking in at just under 15 minutes, “End of the Earth” plays both as a nice segue between his first and next LP, and as an introduction into the artistry of one of hip-hops most talented underground MC’s. We’ll definitely be giving this EP plenty of listens until “Shango” drops and we recommend you do the same.